Before I begin my tangent let me start by saying I am hesitant to even use the term “identity politics.” I feel that the term is used more often than not to silence the voices of women or people of color in leftist spaces when confronting the reality of what it means to be anti racist becomes uncomfortable. That said, I think that there is a staunch difference between liberal identity politics and leftist identity politics.

Leftists acknowledge intersectionalityand use it to improve their analysis so that they may recruit and engage with more people in a more diverse way. Liberals use identity politics totokenize, to excuse their own complacency in white supremacy, and most shallowly to get votes.

This is why I get infuriated when we talk about “the women vote” or “the black vote,” as if anyone who is not a white straight male in our society is of some bizarre kind of hive mind.

Pundits dehumanize LGBTQA+ people when they assume Buttigieg has their votes locked down simply because he is gay.

I hope everyone realizes that is what pundits and politicians are saying when they sayings like “the coveted black women vote.”

They are saying that oppressed groups of voters, such as black people, women, black women are nothing more than who they vote for president and what is worse is the dehumanizing idea that they will all vote for the same person for the same reasons.

When it comes down to discussing the “woman vote” or the “black vote” in the eyes of liberal and conservative pundits you are no longer a collection of individuals, each with your own stories and culture and background and reasoning. No, to them you are simply a part of a demographic, a thing to be used as fodder for politicians and talking heads alike.

They are fucking insulting you and reducing you to an infantile point. We should not stand for this.

Like this:

Wretched hours,
Cursed cliches yet
sinfully,
regrettably again,
I write these words
with a mind of conflict
and a heavy heart.
Thoughts and my body
twisted and wrangled
and always so mother
bloody
fucking
constant.
Find no pattern in these words,
yet please do,
For although there is no story here,
There indeed is,
and for there is no meaning,
There indeed is,
So please bare each mark and page, it is worth true.

Twelve long hours since sobrieties sting.
How can I not spur
the channel of my distressed feeling,
Nor the hour and window
on my due grace,
Yes, my grace,
my crutch,
my only source of please
and cleanse.
I have my own life
to lead now.
I will not bore you
with tedious greeting,
nor false salutations.

I dare ask,
Do we live through
our interests?
Do we define ourselves
victoriously through interests,
not hobbies,
a hobby involves effort.
Interests exist only
internally, yet can
be practiced externally.
There is no point in this coin-flip
of syntax.
Nor is their any
warranted merit.

NAY!
Nay and fie do
I say, nay do
I not say it as it
because it is truth.
Truth that is truth
is known but not spoken.
I dare not speak truth
and make it cliche.

Yet I must,
I am not compelled,
I am demanded.
This is my word,
their effort,
their work.
Hours slip and as I
sip my due reward,
my complacent self,
I am diluted,
I am withered,
I am dry, nevermore.
No, no such fate
is mine,
no such struggle
any
being’s dues.
Prisons are obsolete
and the self
is not self made.

You just didn’t build that,
you didn’t even build you!
You were made!
You were born!
You were named
and then you grew,
and you were labeled.
Labeled and such!
Yet you grew.
You grew despite
being a seed in
a salted Earth.
Robbed of your own
decision of self,
yet all are.
Beauty be had everywhere,
not where it is given,
but where it is.

Beauty,
and love.
These are what hold true,
this is what humans use to define
humans,
but when it is lost,
repressed,
or robbed,
Yes robbed dare say,
all if any,
results are disastrous.

You oppressors,
You may have your false comedian,
and your
phallic lie.
I, nay we, live in a world of truth,
heart, of people
and of soul,
of sweet creatures
both humble
and humbling,
The old adage is
it takes all kinds,
nay it does take all
kinds, to unite against that
of evil kinds.
Evil is NOT all.
Evil is real,
evil is a part of truth,
both accurate and fair,
but evil is not all,
It is rare.

Now begins what else
but a social ravage.
A peak and lost
in the sake of
and stream of time.
All souls suffer,
only by matters of degree,
but it matters
what degree that suffering
differs.
Nor are all sufferings
of the same hue.
Nor cut from
the same cloth.
I am no peaceful
extrovert.
I am guilty
and there is no
retribution to
the admission
of this guilt.

Nor is there any anger.
I do no wrong in life,
yet I have in history,
and in culture.
To some my tears
mean nothing.
And such is just.
Yes, such is just.
For despite any
progressive identity,
any self ascribed sorry,
is not a lie,
but can be empty.
Action, action, action,
but action IS a matter of privilege,
privilege is not supposed to be born.
It is to be earned.
It is, nay was reward.
Marx was right,
capital transcends social
but Marx was also wrong.
We all usually are.
I can think of
no greater sin
than standing up,
and daring to say
“I know.”

Not so. Such is
too harsh.
It is only wrong to assume one
knows all,
that one way
is THE way.

Understanding,
understanding,
knowledge is not
the pursuit of
gain nor profit
but the pursuit of understanding.

And after another
strike upon cupid,
and hope and child,
Christ did rise
off the cross,
Buddha did awaken.
I do dare ask
why such fake
deprivation,
yet I understand,
and I want
and I am.
Too long has a sense of
disposition,
a sense of the
self indulgent self,
that was not in fact indulging,
that was not in fact wrong,
No such repression will be my chain.
No such want haunts me.
But drives me.
These are the patterns
of my effort and thought,
that is my deed.

I am only that what I can be.
Self is only defined
by the self.
And sexual lust
and drive marches on.

Lust, lust,
Lust is no sin.
These so called
acts are deadly,
some yes,
some no,
Does lust not drive
us to love,
produce,
and create?
Does envy not improve
the self?
Don’t worry we all
know that greed is not good
and has no place.
Greed, is the only
true sin.
And sin, the very word
itself, is robbing of all humanity.
I grow sick of “sin”
I grow sick of
slut shaming.
I grow sick of
the acts that are true
yet get denied
or made pariah.
That is a true sin,
judgement is a sin,
because it benefits no human,
it transcends nothing.
Dare say such a word
in our weary 21st century?
Yes.
Dare say to transcend,
to embrace all of the
body physical and
emotional,
Spiritual even if
we wish to mark
territory uncontrived and so.

My lust grows with every hour.
I love it, I embrace it,
my body is not my temple,
it’s my party.
Sanctions roars of
sense and self,
out here in one
of the few bodies
of the free self
of the new idea
and new drive
that is not new but merely reborn.

I say merely for
a rebirth is no
big deal,
our birth and our rebirth is no
big deal,
our birth and our rebirths carry us on,
we learn,
yet some, even many,
do not.
The people are simple,
not stupid.
We do not need
any superior hand,
and yet we do
and yes I say we,
For my brothers,
my Sisters,
and all those out and in between,
WE, the grand,
We.

Strength is greatest in the individual,
and the community.
Balance is the pursuit of all life.
And the meaning of balance,
the pursuit of
semantics.
And what are semantics?
What is the meaning of meaning?
It means nothing,
yet it means everything.
Sexual lust and drive
The beauty of the body
Is the beauty of the world.
Innocence and sin in one moment
and form.
That is the body,
that is the lust.

What else is to be said?
What else is to be done?
Nothing and everything.
The story of life’s
first ambiguous chapter,
and the first chapter,
in this book,
it never ends.
However, it does.